


The Silent Week Is Broken

by HuskersGirlLaura



Series: Vandermeer-Ashiant Universe [1]
Category: Talents Series - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Declarations Of Love, F/M, discussion of miscarriage, miscarriage is 4 years in the past for this story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 03:39:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13849320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuskersGirlLaura/pseuds/HuskersGirlLaura
Summary: Captain Ailsah Vandermeer's week of being exceedingly antisocial is back again, but this time is the first time Prime Isthian 'Thian' Lyon experiences her shutting everyone out. Thian makes sure it will be the last time she does this, by giving Admiral Ashiant a reason to risk her wrath again.





	1. It Begins Again

**Author's Note:**

> First: I'm taking some creative license with Admiral Ashiant, as he's not given a first name in the books.
> 
> Second: I'm changing a tiny bit of history which will turn this series/AU-Universe AU enough that I can a little do what I want.
> 
> Third: There's no direct or outright miscarriage in here, it's 4 years prior to the story.

It was happening again. Like clockwork, about the same time every year for the past four years, his first officer would pull back from everything for a week. He didn’t know what caused her to do it, whatever hurt her so badly still that it caused her to retreat into the woman he’d first brought aboard his ship as a security officer.

Four years ago, they’d been on Proycon for a fleet conference. Security Chiefs and Captains in attendance. For Captains, it was a mandatory attendance conference, Security Chiefs could miss it, but it was highly suggested that they attend. Ailsah had practically begged him to let her stay on the ship and skip it, but he’d insisted. So she’d attended it with him, and her cult leader bastard of a father had come after her.

Things had happened that, on the one hand, he wasn’t proud of, but on the other, he’d realized quite how much she’d come to mean to him over the previous three years. After they’d returned to the ship, she’d become distant and had all but stopped talking to him. Four and a half months of only the most necessary communication between them, and suddenly she’d taken a week off.

The anniversary of that week every year was the same. She became moody and withdrawn, hardly speaking to anyone.

Even the ship’s Prime, Isthian ‘Thian’ Lyon, noticed this year. Thian had come to him worried at the end of Monday. It was now Tuesday evening, and for the first time in four years, Edward Ashiant was planning on risking her rage to ask what was wrong. He’d done it once, the first year after it happened. She’d thrown a paperweight and screamed at him to get out.

The next morning, on the bridge, she’d apologized, and had politely asked him to just let her be for the rest of the week. He’d reluctantly agreed and hadn’t bothered her again. But this year, Thian had told him that part of why she was shutting down did have something to do with him.


	2. It's all in the album!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Admiral Ashiant goes to see what's wrong

He tapped the buzzer button a couple of times. “Coming!” She opened the door, and the first thing he noticed was that her eyes were ringed with red like she’d been crying a great deal. “Eddie. . .” She paused for a moment, then stepped back with a soft sigh. “Come in.”

As he stepped past her, he glanced around her living room. There was a half-empty glass of wine on her table, next to an album that he’d only ever seen in the bottom of her lock box. It was laying open on the table, and just as he noticed that, she slipped past him and flipped the album closed.

“Are you okay, Ailsah?”

For a frighteningly long moment, it didn’t seem like she’d heard him. She was just standing there, hugging the album to her chest while staring blankly at the tabletop. She suddenly looked up at him. “I guess. I don’t know anymore.” She hugged the album a little tighter, then suddenly held it away from her chest. She looked down at it for a long moment before offering it to him. “Everything is in here. I guess, no, I know I should have told you a long time ago, but.” She shrugged. “I’m not really sure where I stand.”

He carefully put his hands on the album, covering hers. “Ailsah, talk to me.”

“I don’t know how.” She pulled her hands out from under his, scooping up the wine glass and draining it. “Just, leave it on the table when you’re done, please?”

“I can do that.” Ailsah took the wineglass to the sink, where she simply put it down and left it, then headed towards her bedroom. He followed her to the door, watching as she laid down and turned her back to him.

He looked back down at the album in his hands, and carefully sitting down on the couch, he opened the album.


	3. Oh. . .

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tearstained album in his hands, crying XO in the other room. Not a position Ashiant likes.

The first page nearly made his heart stop. Dated just a couple of weeks after the conference on Proycon, it was a single picture. One of those early detection pregnancy tests and what was obviously Ailsah’s hand. The test showed a positive.

The second page, dated two weeks after the first, was a copy of a doctor’s notes page. In somewhat squished handwriting, it clearly indicated that the test on the first page was a true positive. The squished handwriting also indicated that with her job, Ailsah was considered a high-risk pregnancy, and needed to come back for a checkup every two weeks.

The third page was an ultrasound, dated three weeks after the note, and a scribbled note, on the edge of the printout, indicating that three weeks was acceptable as far as time between appointments.

The next several pages were all further ultrasounds. One also had a clear pocket affixed to the page, a data chip safely tucked inside, a heart drawn around it.

The sixth page was blank, the ink terribly smudged. He could barely read it, but what he could make out made him think that this was the page that the gender would have been revealed on. It would have been about the four-month mark after the conference if she’d kept to the three-week pattern.

Tucked into the binding of the book was a formal looking notice, he pulled it out and unfolded it. Within seconds, he was blinking back tears. It was the formal medical notice that she’d miscarried only a few days after hearing the heartbeat of her unborn child for the first time.

He noticed that there seemed to be something folded up and tucked into the book between the next pages, so he folded the medical notice back up, returned it to its place, and turned the page.

Written in Ailsah’s beautiful longhand, it was a letter. Only a couple of pages, but it was obvious the care that had gone into writing it.


	4. Not a Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thinks she's too broken, Ashiant disagrees.

It was both a confession and fears realized. She hadn’t said a word of any of these things to him in the past, and now his heart was breaking for the woman lying in bed not far from where he sat.

She had been teased by her fellow recruits back at the academy, for her youth, for how seriously she took her studies. They’d called her a failure when she’d refused to socialize. All of it had stuck with her, and when she’d lost the baby she’d so desperately wanted, she’d internalized it and had decided that she was a failure as a woman as well.

He frowned down at the letter in his hands, before folding it carefully up and putting it back between the pages of the album. He closed the book and sat it on the table like she’d asked, before quietly going back over to her bedroom door.

He could hear her crying softly, so he shook his head and walked the rest of the way to the bedside. “Ailsah, Ailsah. You’re not a failure in any way.” He sat down next to her and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. “I should have realized something was different, and I should have been there for you.”

She turned to him slowly. “No, you should have. It was my fault.”

“No. Never think that. It was not your fault. Things like that are never your fault, Ailsah.” He tugged her gently into a seated position and hugged her to his chest.

“But, Eddie, I lost your baby.” Even as she said the words, her voice fell apart, and she started to shake with tears.

He began to rub circles on her back, and she cried against his chest. “We can try again, if you’re up to it, Ailsah. We can always try again.” He kissed the top of her head. “I wanted to ask you to marry me after Proycon, but I didn’t think you cared to be around me. I’ve been keeping my distance because I didn’t think you wanted me around.”

Ailsah kept her face tucked against his chest, so he barely heard her response, but he did hear it. “I prefer having you around.”

He hugged her tightly and kissed her head again. “Then I’m always going to be here, since I somehow convinced fleet command to let us both be on this ship, even with me planning on trying to convince you to marry me.”


	5. Code be Damned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And yet, here we are.

She pulled back from his chest with wide eyes. “But that’s against code.”

“And yet, here we are.”

She fell silent, chewing on her bottom lip. “You want to marry me?”

“Ailsah, I very nearly asked you right after Proycon. I’ve had your ring since then.”

She stared at him. “You’ve carried an engagement ring for me for the last four years?”

He chuckled and stood. “I have.” He dug into his pockets for a moment, before pulling a beautiful silver and garnet ring from one. He smiled down at the small thing in his hands, then got down on one knee. “Ailsah, will you marry me?”

For a moment, she just looked at him, then tears were running down her face. “You’re serious?”

“Absolutely.”

She slid off the bed into his arms and tucked herself against his chest. “Then yes. Yes, I want to be your wife.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips against his.

He smiled into the kiss, before gently breaking it and looking down at her hands. He took her left hand, gently slipping the ring onto her ring finger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping you'll stick around to see what else my universe of Talents can get up to!


End file.
